by Mandy Baggot
Now, what was it she had to do with the ropes and the rods? Water was slopping into the area she was perched on and the constant rolling motion was not letting up at all. It was like being on an airport walkway that was malfunctioning – taking you nearer to the gate then changing its mind – and repeat, at max speed.
The sail was making a noise now. A thumping then a thwacking like it was angry. It probably wasn’t used to being manhandled by a complete novice. Becky took control of the thin rope and then… she was off! With a scream, she was thrown back against the rear of the carved-out section, lifejacket cutting into her ribs, zipping across the ocean like the yacht had been given an engine. Sea salt and spray flashed into Becky’s eyes and coated her lips and she hurriedly wiped at her face in order to maintain some sort of visual on where she was going. It was all too fast now, and rocky and… should they really be out in the water in these flimsy things when the sea seemed to be on the verge of ferocious?
‘Becks! Slow down!’ It was Petra’s voice, only a whisper on the wind. Did Petra really think she wanted to be sailing at this rate of knots? She didn’t want to be sailing at all! She had only really come along because she didn’t think Petra should be on her own with two random men. Playing the mum/big sister and acting older than twenty-five again…
Becky pulled the rod and leaned back a bit, attempting to change her direction. There might not be a lot of sea traffic in this cove at the moment, but there were orange buoys to avoid and there were three other dinghies like hers… and she seemed to be somehow on a direct line to Atlantis.
‘Oh God. Oh God.’
What would happen if she couldn’t slow it down? What would a crash do? Kill them both? Smash the boats to pieces? How much would it cost to replace a boat like this? Hopefully nowhere near as much as it would cost to replace an Aston Martin…
‘Becks! Go another way! Becks!’
It was all very well Petra screaming at her, but some practical advice as to how to achieve ‘another way’ might be nice. No amount of pushing or pulling or shifting her body out of the oblong and leaning to the right or the left seemed to be having any effect whatsoever. She couldn’t crash. Could she? Surely Atlantis would move seeing as he had all the experience.
The sail seemed to be trying to escape from the boat completely now, billowing and rippling, straining tight then arching to capture all the wind. What if it actually came off? What then? Would she stop dead? It should kill her speed, shouldn’t it? Could you detach a sail? No one had given her any instruction about that!
Water lashed at her face as the boat banged over another wave, still heading directly for the other dinghies who seemed to be finding it really hard to change their course and move away from her. Petra had her hands clamped to the side of her mouth, standing up inside her rectangular section. Becky couldn’t hear a word she was saying. Was that the word ‘right’ or ‘tight’? She was already holding on tight. So tight her knuckles were hurting.
Then, above the rushing of the wind and the slapping of the water spraying up onto the body of the yacht, came another sound. The sound of a much larger boat than the one Becky was aboard. Definitely one with an engine. She didn’t need more boats on the water, she needed less of them. None, in fact, would be great.
But the sound of the engine was getting louder and the roar sounded like it was coming closer and Petra was closer too, as was Atlantis. It looked like Troy had been able to sail away, his craft now heading for the other side of the cove. Becky didn’t know where to look, neither it seemed, did Atlantis and any second now she would almost be able to see the whites of his eyes…
As a speedboat arrived at her side, its powerful spray delivering more wet salt to both the dinghy and her face, it was all Becky could do to hold on at all. The rope was wet between her hands and she still had no idea what the pole could achieve. It actually looked like something that could slip inside the canvas of a tent, not something that had the potential to steer a yacht.
Becky screamed and let go of the rope completely as something landed on top of the boat. The vessel began to sway and lean and veer up on one side. She ducked down slightly, closing her eyes, terrified it was an octopus. Petra had informed her octopuses could jump out of the water just last night and forced her to watch a terrifying video where the eight tentacled fiend took a crab hostage and sucked out its insides. Crashing was inevitable now. She was going to be thrown into the sea and meet a watery end, probably on top of Atlantis…
‘Becky!’
Forty-One
Becky opened one eye. It was a voice she knew, but it didn’t belong here. Perhaps she was even imagining it. She opened her other eye and realised it wasn’t her imagination. It was Elias, wearing nothing but very small swimming trunks and grappling for the rope and the pole she had discarded as useless.
‘Becky, you have to be ready to jump off the boat if I can’t turn us away in time.’
‘I… don’t know what to do,’ she answered. She had never felt so stupid. It had been madness to agree to captain a craft when she was obviously completely incapable.
‘If I say “jump” you must jump!’ he told her. He was standing, every muscle in that tight torso straining and working, giving Becky a show worthy of a night at Magic Mike Live. And there was that tattoo. Finally fully on display. But with the wind and the sea spray and the fact they were in jeopardy, Becky couldn’t focus enough to see what it was. Just like the last time he’d had his shirt off in Kefalonia when she’d had to keep her attention on a half-drowned Petra.
‘Becky! If I say “jump” you jump,’ Elias repeated.
You jump I jump. Jack and Rose. That famous doomed vessel. Argh!
‘I can help,’ she insisted, trying to stand like Elias was.
‘Don’t come to this side,’ he shouted. ‘You’ll tip us.’
‘Then what can I do?’ she called back. Petra and Atlantis’s boats were so close now and Becky’s dinghy showed no signs of slowing down.
‘I am trying to turn it away from the wind,’ Elias told her.
‘I’ve been trying to do that,’ she insisted. ‘The wind is everywhere!’
Becky watched as Elias leaned back with the rope, desperately trying to manoeuvre the sail and change the direction of the yacht. He definitely had a gym body. A defined six-pack and muscular pecs but not in that overdone body-builder way, more in a way that said toned but not obsessed. And she needed to stop staring at him and concentrate on not dying.
The waves were still cresting and Petra started to scream as Becky’s boat began to come within inches of hers. Becky held on tight, almost knowing the call to jump was coming. How could it not be?
But then, with one almighty groan from Elias, suddenly the boat stopped its full-on assault of the ocean and the wind dropped out of the sail, turning slightly to the right and in just enough time for it to skirt past Petra and Atlantis.
Elias fell down onto the boat, breathing hard, perspiring, eyes now closed as the yacht continued to drift – but lightly – out around the cove.
‘You did it!’ Becky exclaimed excitedly. ‘No one died! And the boat isn’t wrecked!’ She clambered on all fours, from the sunken section, to the part where Elias was laid out.
‘I feel like I have died,’ he admitted, eyes still screwed up tight. ‘It is too long since I have sailed one of these things.’
Becky sat down, crossed her legs and took a moment to admire his physique again. The tattoo had branches, an olive tree, spiralling around a letter. H?
Elias eyes flicked open and Becky averted her gaze. ‘I haven’t sailed one of these things my whole life.’ She smiled. ‘What are you doing here? I mean, how come you were here when I got in trouble?’
‘I was at the taverna,’ he told her. ‘I saw you getting the boats and then I saw what was happening, so I called the lifeboat.’
‘I feel so embarrassed,’ she admitted. ‘All of that because I can’t sail a boat around a cove.’
‘It is n
ot always that easy if you have never done it before.’
‘Petra doesn’t seem to be struggling.’ Petra was now looking like an expert in all things nautical, the breeze blowing through her plaits, Troy coming back into her orbit to admire her prowess.
‘Do you want to learn?’ Elias asked her.
‘I’m not entirely sure.’
‘I can teach you,’ he offered, sitting up.
‘Oh, I don’t want to put you out or…’
‘I’m already in my swimsuit, on board… it’s going to take the same amount of time to shower and clean up no matter when I do it.’
The alternative seemed to be calling back the lifeboat and being taken back to shore, humiliated. She was already going to have to brush it off as nothing with Petra later.
‘Well,’ Becky began. ‘If you think you can teach the unteachable then I guess I’ll give it a go.’
‘OK,’ Elias replied. He stood up again, balancing carefully as he made his way to the captain’s position. ‘But before we get started with the lesson, there’s something I need to tell you.’
Becky swallowed. Was he ready to be honest with her yet? What did it matter? He was a passing crush…
‘You’re a lawyer,’ she told him.
He let out a heavy sigh. ‘You know already.’
‘Petra and I asked around at the village and then she Googled you.’
‘OK,’ he answered, nodding. ‘OK.’
‘I don’t know why you wouldn’t want anyone to know that,’ Becky started. She could see that her knowing his real occupation had affected him. Gone was any self-assurance he had possessed in all their earlier interaction. Now he looked a little like he wished he had had to jump off the boat. And what was she expecting him to say next?
‘It is difficult,’ he answered. ‘Even more difficult now we are in Corfu.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Elias motioned for her to get back in the driving seat of the boat. ‘The first rule of sailing is to know that there is only ever one boss.’
‘Me, the captain,’ Becky answered. ‘That was the whole reason for the failure of sailing so far.’
‘No,’ Elias told her. ‘You are never in charge. The only thing in charge is the sea. Always respect the sea. Always.’
‘O-K.’
‘OK, relax. Hold the rope in this hand, like this and remember that it is your steering wheel. You drive, right?’
‘Currently a ride James Bond would approve of.’
‘Now, the boat needs the wind to power it, but equally, you need to control how much.’
‘Yes,’ Becky said. ‘I got that. Not a clue how to achieve it though.’
Elias put his hand over hers and helped her with the rope. ‘Learn to feel how the boat is moving. Understand by the reaction it has on the water, with the wind, what you need to do.’
Becky let out a squeal as the boat suddenly gathered momentum again.
‘You feel that?’ Elias asked her.
‘Yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘I feel it!’
It wasn’t all she was feeling either. Elias’s hand in hers felt a lot more powerful than the signals the rope was giving off. It was firm and tender all at once and he was guiding her fingers with his.
‘One of the reasons I could not tell you what I did once we got to Corfu was…’ He took a breath. ‘My client, the one I have come here for, needs me to go into his house to create an inventory of what’s in there.’
‘An inventory?’ Becky queried, not understanding.
Elias nodded and shifted his position, coming up close behind her, squeezing into the small space and helping her gain more traction on the rope. That fine torso was pressing into hers, solid, muscular, the heat from his body transferring.
‘I needed to know if the person that has been living at the house – not my client – is attempting to hide assets they have bought during the marriage and with joint funds.’
Then, all at once, it completely clicked for Becky. ‘Villa Selino. That’s why you were there. Not to put it on the market.’
She felt Elias take a breath in, then slowly exhale, nodding. ‘Yes.’
Becky shook her head. ‘Of all the villas and the people, you are connected to the one I’m staying in.’ She paused before finishing. ‘The man I sat next to on a plane from London.’
‘I know,’ he breathed. ‘And I had no idea, not when we talked in-flight, or in Athens or Kefalonia, or even when we arrived at the airport here.’ He slipped his fingers around hers, helping her to manipulate the rope to steer the dinghy. ‘And I hate it.’
‘You’re the person Ms O’Neill doesn’t want me to let in,’ Becky stated. ‘She’s not worried about security because of thieves, she’s worried because of you. She somehow knows you’re coming here.’
‘Yes,’ Elias replied. ‘I think so.’
‘And she’s using me to keep you out. Away from whatever she’s hiding away along with the…’ She stopped herself. She had been going to mention the expensive cars.
‘Along with the?’
‘Along with the… luxury expensive face creams that Petra’s dying to dip in to.’
‘Pull the rope a little to the right now,’ Elias encouraged, his forearms touching her sides. ‘Look to the horizon. See, what progress we are making.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Becky asked him. ‘You know I can’t let you in. It would be compromising my staying there and I’ve—’
‘I wouldn’t ask you to do that.’
‘No?’ Becky said. ‘Because when you turned up the other day you pretended you were selling the property and wanted to take measurements.’
*
Elias had no answer to that. She was absolutely correct, of course. Even after he had realised exactly who was staying at Villa Selino, he had continued regardless. Lying to Becky and Petra, doing his upmost to keep his business on track.
‘I know,’ he replied.
‘So, what’s changed?’ Becky wanted to know. ‘Why now are you telling me the truth?’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘Except that none of it feels quite right anymore.’
It was this damned island and being back with his mum and dad. It was Panos’s Taverna and the stray dogs and Areti with her piles of washing. It was a world away from what he had changed his life into. It was all seeping under his toughened shell, more of the moist centre exposed, like a snail losing its outer cover. And, more disconcerting than all of that, he had a feeling it was also down to Becky…
‘Captain Rebecca,’ he sighed.
‘No promotion to a general yet.’
He ignored her joke. ‘I have a key to Villa Selino now,’ Elias admitted. ‘I have full permission from my client to go into the property.’
‘I see.’
‘But I’m not going to do it.’
‘I don’t know what you expect me to say.’
‘I don’t expect you to say anything,’ Elias replied. The boat had good, even speed now and was sailing around the cove, the glistening blue water licking the sides of its hull. ‘But, I hope, maybe, that you can forgive me for not being honest with you from the beginning.’
‘Isn’t it what people do when they’re seated next to one another on a plane?’ He watched her sigh, a little more relaxed now, looking across the water, the sunlight on her face. ‘Not give their real name. Make up a story about what they do for a job. I did that, remember? Captain Rebecca.’
‘But when we started to get to know each other a little…’ He took a breath. ‘In Kefalonia. I thought—’
‘I’m not like Petra,’ Becky blurted out, taking her hands from his. Elias immediately felt the absence. His fingers cooled against the rope, his heart dropping.
‘I know you are not like Petra,’ he whispered.
‘I don’t have great hair you can wind into any imaginable style. I don’t have her incredibly tight body that looks like the most perfect mannequin of health. I carry around a book called How to Find t
he Love of Your Life or Die Trying.’
She tried to shift a little away from him, but the boat rocked and he put a hand on her shoulder to steady her.
‘I don’t want you to die trying,’ Elias told her sincerely.
‘I’m not sure I even want to try,’ Becky said, a little sadly.
‘I understand that too,’ Elias said. ‘More than you know.’ He needed to follow that sentence up quickly, because something had shifted. ‘But life is full of coincidences, is it not? And those simple coincidences can change things.’
‘I still don’t know what you’re trying to say,’ Becky responded.
No, he didn’t really know what he was trying to say either. He should say that he felt something for her. He should say that he did not know what it was, but that it was something. And it had been so long since he had felt anything. He should say that it was new and exciting, but also terrifying and confronting.
‘I am saying… you do have… great hair.’ He closed his eyes, glad that she was unable to see his face right now. He was an idiot. The silence seemed to elongate, the sound of the sea, rushing under them, the spray spitting and hissing. He didn’t trust himself to open his mouth and say anything better, so he kept his mouth closed.
‘The last boyfriend I had… he didn’t think I had… great hair.’
Was she going to open up to him now? He wasn’t sure he deserved it. In fact, he knew he didn’t deserve it. But he wanted it. He wanted to know so much more about Captain Rebecca Rose.
‘He pretended to like… my hair. He actually pretended to like my hair for quite some considerable time. Over a year. Eighteen months. Eighteen months of telling me… that my hair was all he had ever wanted and…’
Elias wanted to touch her hair now, even though he knew the conversation wasn’t really about that. He wanted to run his fingers over the caramel-coloured waves, the sunlight picking out notes of red and gold as it danced over the strands.